Ken Langone is a multibillionaire American businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is well known for arranging to fund The Home Depot’s founders.
The Home Depot sells tools, building materials, and other services and is the biggest home improvement business in the USA. In 1978, Ken Langone made an initial investment in Home Depot and joined Arthur Blank and Bernard Marcus as cofounders.
Early Life
Ken Langone was born to working-class Italian Americans in New York. His mother worked in a café and his father worked as a plumber. His family has been believed to possess “a lot of love, but not a lot of money.” Being raised in a household where everyone lived paycheck to paycheck, Ken learned the worth of a dollar.
When he was old enough just to support his family, he started doing odd jobs. His first job as a young lad was selling newspapers. He performed a range of duties to help his family’s financial situation.
He performed numerous jobs including digging trenches for the road while working in construction. His family adopted a work-intensive lifestyle, but this young child understood that better and bigger things lay ahead for him.
Success Story
Early in the 1960s, Ken began working his first white-collar job for a Wall Street financial services company. He was a big success and advanced quickly in the corporate world. Ken was one of Ross Perot’s favorite people. In 1968, Ken was given responsibility for the IPO of Electronic Data Systems. To be his boss, Ken started the venture capital firm Invented in 1974.
Ken Langone and Bernie Marcus had brunch together in 1978. However, this encounter was not only about bacon and eggs. Bernie complained to Ken about how terribly top executives had mistreated him after he had recently lost his job at the home improvement chain, Handy Dan.
With the help of another co-founder, Arthur Blank, Ken and Bernie started formulating ideas for a warehouse-sized store filled with discounted products. The idea was to create a place where the typical customer could purchase everything required to turn their house into a home.
The initial two Home Depot stores opened their doors in 1979 after Ken was able to raise the necessary funding to launch the company. Three years later, Home Depot decided to go public at a $12 per share price. In 2021, Home Depot generated a revenue of over $151 billion.
Ken Langone had no desire to serve as a silent partner. He put forth a lot of effort after he co-founded Home Depot to raise money and build stores. He desired to treat each employee well because he was from a lower social status. According to Ken, one of the biggest issues in the United States is income inequality.
He doesn’t necessarily support a mandated minimum salary by the government, but he is aware that individuals cannot live on $20,000 per year. He always pays his employees more than the minimum wage.
The success story of Ken Lagone shows that anyone may prosper in a capitalist society. You don’t need to have any special ties or to have had a golden childhood. If you have the right drive, viewpoint, and ideas, you can achieve the capitalist dream while assisting others in doing the same.
I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.